| bjective: Examine the effects of service failure (SF) severity, health criticality (HC) and the presence of service recovery (SR) on patronage outcomes (i.e., satisfaction, trust, purchase intention, and positive (PWOM) and negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) in a community pharmacy setting.;Methods: .;Design: An extended 2 (HC) x 2 (SF) x 2 (SR) between-subjects, pretest-posttest, control group design. Subjects were assigned randomly to one of the ten groups and presented with a multi-part hypothetical scenario of a service encounter at a community pharmacy.;Patients: Community pharmacy patients.;Data collection: Online consumer panel; participants imagined themselves experiencing the scenario described at their own community pharmacy. Dependent measures were evaluated at two points in time: following the HC and SF situation and following the SR effort.;Analysis plan: Descriptive statistics, ANOVA, and t-tests.;Results: 343 useable responses were received and were balanced across groups. Patients were more highly satisfied and exhibited more trust when in low HC conditions. SF had a statistically significant effect on satisfaction and PWOM in the low HC condition only. High SR significantly influenced satisfaction, purchase intentions and PWOM.;Conclusion: HC played a major role in how patients perceived service events in the pharmacy. There were greater differences in how patients rated patronage outcomes between the high and low SFs in the low HC condition. Those in the low HC condition reported significantly greater differences trust, WOM, purchase intentions, and satisfaction, based on the severity of the SF when compared to those in the high HC condition. Pharmacists' awareness of how best to handle patients who perceive a SF in day-to-day community pharmacy interactions (most of which are low HC) are important implications. A high SR (offering a... |
